The recession and recovery in one picture

In Part I of the Numbers Game interview I did with John Taylor, he pointed out that the ratio of employment to population hadn’t rebounded at all in the current recovery. How common is that? Here is data from FRED that looks at the ratio of employment to population. You have to go back to the recession of the early 1960’s (and it wasn’t much of a recession) to see anything like the lack of rebound:

The gray periods are recessions. The ratio usually rebounds sharply in the recovery. But not for this one and not for the one in 1960.